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Religious rites and customs in Palestine: the Temple and the synagogues

Until its destruction in 70 CE, the most important religious institution of the Jews was the Temple in Jerusalem (the Second Temple, erected
538–516 BCE). Although services were interrupted for three years by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–164 BCE) and although the Roman general
Pompey (106–48 BCE) desecrated the Temple in 63 BCE, Herod lavished great expense in rebuilding it. The high priesthood itself became
degraded by the extreme Hellenism of high priests such as Jason and Menelaus, and the institution declined when Herod began the custom
of appointing high priests for political and financial considerations. That not only the multitude of Jews but the priesthood itself suffered
from sharp divisions is clear from the bitter class warfare that ultimately erupted in 59 CE between the high priests on the one hand and the
ordinary priests and the leaders of the populace of Jerusalem on the other.

Although the Temple remained central in Jewish worship, synagogues had already emerged as places for Torah reading and communal
prayer and worship during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE, if not even earlier. In any case, in the following century Ezra stood
upon a pulpit of wood and read from the Torah to the people (Nehemiah). Some scholars maintain that a synagogue existed even within the
precincts of the Temple; certainly by the time of Jesus, to judge from the references to Galilean synagogues in the Christian Scriptures,
synagogues were common in Palestine. Hence, when the Temple was destroyed in 70, the spiritual vacuum was hardly as great as it had been
after the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE).

The chief legislative, judicial, and educational body of the Palestinian Jews during the period of the Second Temple was the Great Sanhedrin
(council court), consisting of 71 members, among whom the Sadducees were an important party. The mem’ers shared the government with
the king during the early years of the Hasmonean dynasty, but, beginning with Herod’s reign, their authority was restricted to religious
matters. In addition, there seems to have been a Sanhedrin, set up by the high priest, which served as a court of political council, as well as a
kind of grand jury.

Religious and cultural life in the Diaspora

During the Hellenistic-Roman period the chief centres of Jewish population outside Palestine were in Syria, Asia Minor, Babylonia, and Egypt,
each of which is estimated to have had at least one million Jews. The large Jewish community of Antioch—which, according to Josephus, had
been given all the rights of citizenship by the Seleucid founder-king, Seleucus I Nicator (died 280 BCE)—attracted a particularly large number
of converts to Judaism. In Antioch the apocryphal book of Tobit was probably composed in the 2nd century BCE to encourage wayward
Diaspora Jews to return to their Judaism. As for the Jews of Asia Minor, whose large numbers were mentioned by Cicero (106–43 BCE), their
not joining in the Jewish revolts against the Roman emperors Nero (reigned 54–68 CE), Trajan (reigned 98–117), and Hadrian (reigned 117–
138) would indicate that they had sunk deep roots into their environment. In Babylonia in the early part of the 1st century CE, two Jewish
brothers, Asinaeus and Anilaeus, established an independent minor state; their followers were so meticulous in observing the Sabbath that
they assumed that it would not be possible to violate it even in order to save themselves from a Parthian attack. In the early 1st century CE,
according to Josephus, the royal house and many of their entourage in the district of Adiabene in northern Mesopotamia were converted to
Judaism; some of the Adiabenian Jews distinguished themselves in the revolt against Rome in 66.
The largest and most Important Jewish settlement in the Diaspora was in Egypt. There is evidence (papyri) of a Jewish military colony at
Elephantine (Yeb), Upper Egypt, as early as the 6th century BCE. These papyri reveal the existence of a Jewish temple—which most certainly
would be considered heterodox—and some syncretism (mixture) with pagan cults. Alexandria, the most populous and most influential
Hellenistic Jewish community in the Diaspora, originated when Alexander the Great assigned a quarter of the city to the Jews. Until about
the 3rd century BCE the papyri of the Egyptian Jewish community were written in Aramaic; after that, with the exception of the Nash papyrus
in Hebrew, all papyri until 400 CE were written in Greek. Similarly, of the 116 Jewish inscriptions from Egypt, all but five are written in Greek.
The process of Hellenistic acculturation is thus obvious.

The most important work of the ear”y Hellenistic period—dating, according to tradition, from the 3rd century BCE—is the Septuagint, a
translation into Greek of the Hebrew Scriptures, including some works not found in the traditional Hebrew canon. The name of the work
(from the Latin septuaginta, “70”) derived from the belief that 72 translators, 6 from each of the 12 tribes, worked independently on the
entire text and produced identical translations. As revealed in the Letter of Aristeas and the works of Philo and Josephus, the Septuagint was
itself regarded by many Hellenized Jews as divinely inspired. The translation shows some knowledge of Palestinian exegesis and the
tradition of Halakhah (the Oral Law); but the rabbis themselves, noting that the translation diverged from the Hebrew text, apparently had
ambivalent feelings about it, as is evidenced in their alternate praise and condemnation of it, as well as in their belief that another translation
of the Scriptures into Greek was needed. The fact that “Torah” was translated as nomos (“law”) and tzedaqa as dikaiosynē (“justice”)
indicates how deeply the authors of the Septuagint believed that Judaism could be accurately expressed using Greek concepts.

The fact that the temple at Leontopolis in Egypt was established (c. 145 BCE) by a deposed high priest, Onias IV, clearly indicates that it was
heterodox; as merely the temple of a military colony, it never really offered a challenge to the Temple in Jerusalem. It is significant that the
Palestinian rabbis ruled that a sacrifice intended for the temple of Onias might be offered in Jerusalem. The temple of Onias made little
impact upon Egyptian Jewry, as can be seen from the silence about it on the part of Philo, who often mentions the Temple in Jerusalem. The
temple of Onias, however, continued until it was closed by the Roman emperor Vespasian (reigned 69–79 CE) in 73.

The chief religious Institutions of the Egyptian Diaspora were synagogues. As early as the 3rd century BCE, there were inscriptions mentioning
two proseuchai, or Jewish prayer houses. In Alexandria there were numerous synagogues throughout the city, of which the largest was so
famous that it is said in the Talmud that he who has not seen it has never seen the glory of Israel.

Egyptian Jewish literature

In Egypt the Jews produced a considerable literature (most of it now lost), intended to inculcate in Greek-speaking Jews a pride in their past
and to counteract a sense of inferiority that some of them felt about Jewish cultural achievements. In the field of history, Demetrius near the
end of the 3rd century BCE wrote a work titled On the Kings in Judaea; perhaps intended to refute an anti-Semitic Egyptian priest and author,
it shows considerable concern for chronology. In the 2nd century BCE a Jew who used the name Hecataeus wrote On the Jews. Another,
Eupolemus (c. 150 BCE), like Demetrius, wrote a work titled On the Kings in Judaea; an indication of its apologetic nature may be seen from
the’fragment asserting that Moses taught the alphabet not only to the Jews but also to the Phoenicians and to the Greeks. Artapanus (c. 100
BCE), in his own book On the Jews, went even further in romanticizing Moses—by identifying him with Musaeus, the semi-mythical Greek
poet, and Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and culture, by asserting that Moses was the real originator of Egyptian civilization, and by
claiming that Moses taught the Egyptians the worship of Apis (the sacred bull) and the ibis (sacred bird). Cleodemus (Malchus), in an attempt
to win for the Jews the regard of the Greeks, asserted in his history that two sons of Abraham had joined Heracles in his expedition in Africa
and that the Greek hero had married the daughter of one of them. On the other hand, Jason of Cyrene (c. 100 BCE) wrote a history, of which 2
Maccabees is a summary, glorifying the Temple and violently attacking the Jewish Hellenizers, but his manner of writing history is typically
Hellenistic. In addition, 3 Maccabees (1st century BCE) is a work of propaganda intended to counteract those Jews who sought to win
citizenship in Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas, though ascribed to the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308–246 BCE), was probably
composed by an Alexandrian Jew about 100 BCE to defend Judaism and its practices against detractors.
Egyptian Jews also composed poems and plays, now extant only in fragments, to glorify their history. Philo the Elder (c. 100 BCE) wrote an
epic, On Jerusalem, in Homeric hexameters. Theodotus (c. 100 BCE) also wrote an epic, On Shechem; it was quite clearly apologetic, to judge
from the fragment connecting the name of Shechem with Sikimios, the son of the Greek god Hermes. At about the same time, a Jewish poet
wrote a didactic poem, ascribing it to the pagan Phocylides, though closely following the Bible in some details; the author disguised his
Jewish origin by omitting any attack against idolatry from his moralizing. A collection known as The Sibylline Oracles, containing Jewish and
Christian prophecies in pagan disguise, includes some material composed by a 2nd-century-BCE Alexandrian Jew who intended to glorify
pious Jews and perhaps win converts.

A Jewish dramatist of the period, Ezekiel (c. 100 BCE), composed tragedies in Greek. Fragments of one of them, The Exodus, show how deeply
he was influenced by the Greek dramatist Euripides (484–406 BCE). Whether or not such plays were actually presented on the stage, they
edified Jews and showed pagans that the Jews had as much material for drama as they did.

The greatest achievements of Alexandrian Judaism were in the realm of wisdom literature and philosophy. In a work on the analogical
interpretation of the Law of Moses, Aristobulus of Paneas (2nd century BCE) anticipated Philo in attempting to harmonize Greek philosophy
and the Torah. He used allegory to explain anthropomorphisms in the Bible and asserted that the Greek philosophers were indebted to
Moses. The Wisdom of Solomon, dating from the 1st century BCE, shows an acquaintance with the Platonic doctrine of the preexistence of the
soul and with a method of argument known as sorites, which was favoured by the Stoics (see Stoicism). During the same period, the author
of 4 Maccabees showed an intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy, particularly of Stoicism.

By far the greatest figure in Alexandrian Jewish literature is Philo, who has come to be recognized as the first Jewish theologian. His use of
Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato, to explicate the ideas of the Torah and his formulation of the Logos (Word, or Divine Reason) as
an intermediary between God and the world helped lay the foundations of Neoplatonism, gnosticism, and the philosophical outlook of the
early Church Fathers. Philo was a devotee of Judaism neither as a mystic cult nor as a collateral branch of Pharisaic Judaism. With his
profound knowledge of Greek literature—and despite his almost total ignorance of Hebrew—he tried to find a way in which Judaism could
appropriate Hellenic thought.

There was also a Jewish community in Rome, which numbered perhaps 50,000. To judge from the inscriptions in the Jewish catacombs, it
was predominantly Greek-speaking. References by Roman writers, particularly Tacitus (56–120 CE) and the satirists, have led scholars to
conclude that the community was influential, that it observed the Sabbath and the dietary laws, and that it actively sought converts.

The Hellenization of the Diaspora Jews is reflected not merely in their literature but even more in various papyri and art objects. As early as
290 BCE, Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek living in Egypt, had remarked that under the Persians and Macedonians the Jews had greatly modified
the traditions of their fathers. Other papyri indicate that at least three-fourths of Egyptian Jews had personal names of Greek rather than
Hebrew origin. The only schools mentioned are Sabbath schools intended for adults; this suggests that Jews were extremely eager to gain
admittance for their children to Greek gymnasia, where quite obviously they would have had to make compromises with their Judaism.
Again, there are a number of violations from the norms of Halakhah (which precluded the charging of interest for a loan): most notably, 9 of
11 extant loan documents charge interest. There are often striking similarities between Jewish and Greek documents of sale, marriage, and
divorce in Egypt, though some of this—as with the documents of the Elephantine Jewish community—may be due to a common origin in the
law of ancient Mesopotamia. The charms and apotropaic amulets are often syncretistic, and the Jews can hardly have been unaware of the
religious significance of symbols that were still very much filled with meaning in pagan cults. The fact that the Jewish community of
Alexandria was preoccupied in the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE with obtaining rights as citizens—which certainly involved
compromises with Judaism, including participation in pagan festivals and sacrifices—shows how far they were ready to deviate from earlier
norms. Philo mentions Jews who scoffed at the Bible, which they insisted on interpreting literally, and others who failed to adhere to biblical
laws that they regarded as mere allegory; he writes too of Jews who observed nothing of Judaism except the holiday of Yom Kippur. But
despite such deviations, pagan writers constantly accused the Diaspora Jews of being “haters of mankind” and of being absurdly
superstitious. Christian writers later similarly attacked the Jews for refusing to give up the Torah. The Jews of Egypt were at least loyal in their
contributions of the Temple tax and in their pilgrimages to Jerusalem on the three festivals. Virulent anti-Semitism and massacres
perpetrated by non-Jews in Egypt apparently discouraged actual apostasy and intermarriage, which were not common.
Palestinian literature

During this period, literature was composed in Palestine in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek; the original language of many of these texts remains
disputed by scholars, and the works that have survived were apparently composed by more than one author over a considerable period of
time. Of the works originally composed in Hebrew, many—including Ecclesiasticus, 1 Maccabees, Judith, Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs, Baruch, Psalms of Solomon—existed only in Greek during the remainder of the Hellenistic period. They and many of the Dead Sea
Scrolls are generally conscious imitations of biblical books, often reflecting the dramatic events of the Maccabean struggle and often tinged
with apocalyptic themes (involving the dramatic intervention of God in history). The literature in Aramaic consists of biblical or Bible-like
legends or Midrashic (interpretive) additions (Testament of Job, Martyrdom of Isaiah [see Isaiah, Ascension of], Paralipomena of Jeremiah,
Life of Adam and Eve, Genesis Apocryphon [from the Dead Sea Scrolls], book of Tobit, History of Susanna, and the story of Bel and the
Dragon) and of apocalypses (the First Book of Enoch [perhaps originally written in Hebrew], Assumption of Moses, Syriac Apocalypse of
Baruch, Second Book of Esdras, and Apocalypse of Abraham). In Greek the chief works by Palestinians are histories of the Jewish war against
Rome and of the Jewish kings by Justus of Tiberias (both are lost) and, by Josephus, History of the Jewish War, originally in Aramaic, and
Jewish Antiquities (both written in Rome).

Of the wisdom literature composed in Hebrew, the book of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus (c. 180–175 BCE),
modeled on the book of Proverbs, identified Wisdom with the observance of the Torah. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, probably
written in the latter half of the 2nd century BCE, patterned on Jacob’s blessings to his sons, is thought to belong to eschatological literature
related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The identification of Wisdom and Torah is stressed in the Mishnaic tract Pirqe Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”),
which, though edited about 200 CE, contains the aphorisms of rabbis dating back to 300 BCE.

Books such as the Testament of Job, Genesis Apocryphon, the Book of Jubilees (now known to have been composed in Hebrew, as seen by
its appearance among the Dead Sea Scrolls), and Biblical Antiquities (falsely attributed to Philo; originally written in Hebrew, then translated
into Greek, but now extant only in Latin), as well as the first half of Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, often show affinities with rabbinic
Midrashim (interpretive works) in their legendary accretions of biblical details. Sometimes, as in Jubilees and in the Pseudo-Philo work,
these accretions are intended to answer the questions of heretics, but often, particularly in the case of Josephus, they are apologetic in
presenting biblical heroes in a guise that would appeal to a Hellenized audience.

Apocalyptic trends, given considerable impetus by the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks, were not (as was formerly thought)
restricted to Pharisaic circles. They were (as is clear from the Dead Sea Scrolls) found in other groups as well and are of particular importance
for their influence on both Jewish mysticism and early Christianity. These books, which have a close connection with the biblical Book of
Daniel, stress the impossibility of a rational solution to the problem of theodicy. They also stress the imminence of the day of salvation,
which is to be preceded by terrible hardships, and presumably reflected the current historical setting. In the First Book of Enoch there is
stress on the terrible punishment inflicted upon sinners in the Last Judgment, the imminent coming of the messiah and his kingdom, and the
role of angels.

The sole Palestinian Jewish author writing in Greek whose works are preserved is Josephus. His account of the war against the Romans in his
Life—and, to a lesser degree, in the Jewish War—is largely a defense of his own questionable behaviour as the commander of Jewish forces in
Galilee. But these works, especially Against Apion and Jewish Antiquities, are also d’fenses of Judaism against anti-Semitic attacks. The
Jewish War often quite deliberately parallels the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (c. 460–c. 404 BCE); and the Jewish
Antiquities quite deliberately parallels the Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 20 BCE), a work that dates from earlier in the
same century.

The Roman period (63 BCE–135 CE)

New parties and sects

Palestine during the time of Herod the Great and his sons

Palestine during the time of Herod the Great and his sons
Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in Palestine. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish
state. They were also zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the Torah.

After the death of King Herod, a political group known as the Herodians, who apparently regarded Herod as the messiah, sought to
reestablish the rule of Herod’s descendants over an independent Palestine as a prerequisite for Jewish preservation. Unlike the Zealots,
however, they did not refuse to pay taxes to the Romans.

Roman soldiers carrying the menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem

Roman soldiers carrying the menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem

Roman soldiers carrying the menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE; detail of a relief on the Arch of Titus, Rome, 81 CE.

The Zealots, whose appearance was traditionally dated to 6 CE, were one of five groups that emerged at the outset of the first Jewish war
against Rome (66–73 CE), which began when the Jews expelled the Romans from Jerusalem, the client king Agrippa II fled the city, and a
revolutionary government was established. The Zealots were a mixture of bandits, insurgents from Jerusalem, and priests, who advocated
egalitarianism and independence from Rome. In 68 they overthrew the government established by the original leaders of the revolt and took
control of the Temple during the civil war that followed; many of them perished in the sack of Jerusalem by the Roman general (and later
emperor) Titus (reigned 79–81) or in fighting after the city’s fall. The Sicarii (Assassins), so-called because of the daggers (sica) they carried,
arose about 54 CE, according to Josephus, as a group of bandits who kidnapped or murdered those who had found a modus vivendi with the
Romans. It was they who made a stand at the fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea, committing suicide rather than allowing themselves to
be captured by the Romans (73).

A number of other parties—various types of Essenes, Damascus covenanters, and the Qumrān–Dead Sea groups—were distinguished by their
pursuit of an ascetic monastic life, disdain for material goods and sensual gratification, sharing of material possessions, concern for
eschatology, strong apocalyptic views in anticipation of the coming of the messiah, practice of ablutions to attain greater sexual and ritual
purity, prayer, contemplation, and study. The Essenes differed from the Therapeutae, a Jewish religious group that had flourished in Egypt
two centuries earlier, in that the latter actively sought “wisdom” whereas the former were anti-intellectual. Only some of the Essenes were
celibate. The Essenes have been termed “gnosticizing Pharisees” because of their belief, shared with the gnostics, that the world of matter is
evil.

The Damascus sect (New Covenanters) was a group of Pharisees who went beyond the letter of the Pharisaic Halakha. Like the Essenes and
the Dead Sea sects, they adopted a monastic lifestyle and opposed the way in which sacrifices were offered in the Temple.

The discoveries of scrolls In the caves of Qumrān, near the Dead Sea, beginning in 1947, focused attention on the groups that had lived there.
On the basis of paleography, carbon-14 testing, and the coins discovered in the caves, most scholars accept a 1st-century date for them. A
theoretical relationship of the communities with John the Baptist and the nascent Christian groups remains in dispute, however. The
sectaries have been identified variously as Zealots, an unnamed anti-Roman group, and especially Essenes. That the groups had secret,
presumably apocalyptic teachings is clear from the fact that some of the scrolls are in cryptographic script and reversed writing; yet, despite
the sectaries’ extreme piety and legalistic conservatism, they apparently were not unaware of Hellenism, to judge from the presence of Greek
books at Qumrān.

It has long been debated whether gnosticism originated in the apocalyptic strains of Judaism that were prevalent when the Temple was
destroyed in 70. Although it is doubtful that there is any direct Jewish source of gnosticism, some characteristic gnostic doctrines are found
in certain groups of particularly apocalyptic 1st-century Jews—the dichotomy of body and soul and a disdain for the material world, a notion
of esoteric knowledge, and an intense interest in angels and in problems of creation.

Origin of Christianity: the early Christians and the Jewish community

Although it attracted little attention among pagans and Jews in its early years, the rise of Christianity was by far the most important
“sectarian” development of the Roman period. Largely owing to the discoveries at Qumrān, many scholars now regard primitive Christianity,
with its apocalyptic and eschatological interests, as part of a broad spectrum of attitudes within Judaism itself, rather than as peripheral to
Jewish development or to the norm set by Pharisaic Judaism. Indeed, Jesus himself may now be classified as an apocalyptic prophet whose
announced intentions were not to abrogate the Torah but to fulfill it. It is possible to envision a direct line between Jewish currents, both in
Palestine and the Diaspora in the Hellenistic Age, and Christianity—particularly in the traditions of martyrdom, proselytism, monasticism,
mysticism, liturgy, and theology and especially with the doctrine of the Logos (Word) as an intermediary between God and the world and as
the connection of faith and reason. The Septuagint in particular played an important role both theoretically, in the transformation of Greek
philosophy into the theology of the Church Fathers, and practically, in converting Jews and Jewish “sympathizers” to Christianity. In general,
moreover, Christianity was more positively disposed toward Hellenism than was Pharisaism, particularly under the leadership of Paul, a
thoroughly Hellenized Jew.

Even after Paul proclaimed his opposition to observance of the Torah as a means of salvation, many Jewish Christians continued the practice.
Among them were two main groups: the Ebionites—probably the people called minim, or “sectaries,” in the Talmud—who accepted Jesus as
the messiah but denied his divinity; and the Nazarenes, who regarded Jesus as both messiah and God yet still regarded the Torah as binding
upon Jews.

The number of Jews converted to an” form of Christianity was extremely small, as can be seen from the frequent criticisms of Jews for their
stubbornness by Christian writers. In the Diaspora, despite the strong influence of Hellenism, there were relatively few Jewish converts,
though the Christian movement had some success in winning over Alexandrian Jews.

There were four major stages in the final break between Christianity and Judaism: (1) the flight of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem to
Pella across the Jordan in 70 and their refusal to continue the struggle against the Romans, (2) the institution by the patriarch Gamaliel II of a
prayer in the Eighteen Benedictions against such heretics (c. 100), and (3 and 4) the failure of the Christians to join the messianic leaders
Lukuas-Andreas and Bar Kokhba in the revolts against Trajan and Hadrian in 115–117 and 132–135, respectively.

Judaism under Roman rule

When Pompey entered the Temple in 63 BCE as an arbiter both in the civil war between John Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus I and in the struggle
of the Pharisees against both Jewish rulers, Judaea in effect became a puppet state of the Romans. During the civil war between Pompey and
Julius Caesar (c. 49–45 BCE), the Idumaean Antipater (died 43 BCE) ingratiated himself with Caesar and was rewarded by being made
governor of Judaea; the Jews were rewarded through the promulgation of a number of decrees favourable to them, which were reaffirmed
by Augustus (reigned 27 BCE–14 CE) and later emperors. Antipater’s son Herod, king of Judaea, an admirer of Greek culture, supported a cult
worshipping the emperor and built temples to Augustus in non-Jewish cities. Because he was by origin an Idumaean, he was regarded by
many Jews as a foreigner. (The Idumaeans, or Edomites, had been forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus.) On several occasions
during and after Herod’s reign, Pharisaic delegations sought to convince the Romans to end the quasi-independent Jewish government. After
the death of Herod’s son and successor, Archelaus, in 6 CE, Herod’s realms were ruled by Roman procurators, the most famous (or infamous)
of whom, Pontius Pilate (died 36), attempted to introduce busts of the Roman emperor into Jerusalem and discovered the intense religious
zeal of the Jews in opposing this measure. When the emperor Caligula (reigned 37–41) ordered that a statue of himself be erected in the
Temple, a large number of Jews proclaimed that they would suffer death rather than permit such a desecration. In response, the governor of
Syria, Petronius, succeeded in getting the emperor to delay. The procurators of Judaea, being of equestrian (knightly) rank and often of
Oriental Greek stock, were more anti-Jewish than the governors of Syria, who were of the higher senatorial order. The last procurators in
particular were indifferent to Jewish religious sensibilities; and various patriotic groups, to whom nationalism was an integral part of their
religion, succeeded in polarizing the Jewish population and bringing on the first war with Rome in 66. The climax of the war, as noted earlier,
was the destruction of the Temple in 70, though, according to Josephus, Titus sought to spare it.

The papyri Indicate that the war against Trajan—involving the Jews of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia (though only to a minor
degree those of Palestine)—was a widespread revolt under a Cyrenian king-messiah, Lukuas-Andreas, aimed at freeing Palestine from Roman
rule. In 132–135 the same spirit of freedom inspired another uprising, the Second Jewish Revolt, led by Bar Kokhba, who may have had the
support of the greatest rabbi of the time, Akiba ben Joseph (40–c. 135). The result was Hadrian’s decrees prohibiting circumcision and public
instruction in the Torah, though these were soon revoked by Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161). Having suffered such tremendous losses on
the field of battle, Judaism turned its dynamism to the continued development of the Talmud.
Louis H. Feldman

Rabbinic Judaism (2nd–18th century)

The age of the tannaim (135–c. 200)

The role of the rabbis

After the defeat of Bar Kokhba and the ensuing collapse of active Jewish resistance to Roman rule (135–136), politically moderate and
quietist rabbinic elements remained the only cohesive group in Jewish society. With Jerusalem off-limits to the Jews, rabbinic ideology and
practice, which were not dependent on the Temple, priesthood, or political independence for their vitality, provided a viable program for
autonomous community life and thus filled the vacuum created by the suppression of all other Jewish leadership. The Romans, confident
that the will for insurrection had been shattered, soon relaxed the Hadrianic prohibitions of Jewish ordination, public assembly, and
regulation of the’calendar and permitted rabbis who had fled the country to return and reestablish an academy in the town of Usha in
Galilee.

The strength of the rabbinate lay in its ability to represent simultaneously the interests of the Jews and the Romans, whose religious and
political needs, respectively, now chanced to coincide. The rabbis were regarded favourably by the Romans as a politically submissive class,
which, with its wide influence over the Jewish masses, could translate the Pax Romana (the peace imposed by Roman rule) into Jewish
religious precepts. To the Jews, on the other hand, the rabbinic ideology gave the appearance of continuity to Jewish self-rule and freedom
from alien interference. The rabbinic program fashioned by Johanan ben Zakkai and his circle replaced sacrifice and pilgrimage to the
Temple with the study of Scripture, prayer, and works of piety, thus eliminating the need for a central sanctuary (in Jerusalem) and making
Judaism a religion capable of practice anywhere. Judaism was now, for all intents and purposes, a Diaspora religion, even on its home soil.
Any sense of real break with the past was mitigated by continued adherence to purity laws (dietary and bodily) and by assiduous study of
Scripture, including the legal elements that historical developments had now made inoperable. The reward held out for scrupulous study
and fulfillment was the promise of messianic deliverance—i.e., the divine restoration of all those institutions that had become central in
Jewish notions of national independence, including the Davidic monarchy, Temple service, and the ingathering of Diaspora Jewry. Above all
these rewards was the assurance of personal resurrection and participation in the national rebirth.

Apart from the right to teach Scripture publicly, the most pressing need felt by the surviving rabbis was for the reorganization of a body that
would revive the functions of the former Sanhedrin and pass judgment on disputed questions of law and dogma. Accordingly, a high court
was organized under the leadership of Simeon ben Gamaliel (reigned c. 135–c. 175), the son of the previous patriarch (the Roman term for
the head of the Palestinian Jewish community) of the house of Hillel, in association with rabbis representing other schools and interests. In
the ensuing struggle for power, Gamaliel managed to concentrate all communal authority in his office. The reign of Gamaliel’s son and
successor, Judah the Prince, marked the climax of this period of rabbinic activity, otherwise known as the “age of the tannaim” (teachers).
Armed with wealth, Roman backing, and dynastic legitimacy (which the patriarch now traced to the house of David), Judah sought to
standardize Jewish practice through a corpus of legal norms that would reflect accepted views of the rabbinate on every aspect of life. The
Mishna that soon emerged became the primary reference work in all rabbinic schools and constituted the core around which the Talmud was
later compiled (see Talmud and Midrash). It thus remains the best single introduction to the complex of rabbinic values and practices as they
evolved in Roman Palestine.

The making of the Mishna

Although the promulgation of an official corpus represented a break with rabbinic precedent, Judah’s Mishna did have antecedents. During
the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, rabbinic schools had compiled for their own use collections of Midrashim (singular Midrash, meaning
“investigation” or “interpretation”), in which the results of their exegesis and application of Scripture to problematic situations were
recorded in terse legal form. By 200 CE several such compilations were circulating in Jewish schools and were being utilized by judges. While
adhering to the structural form of these earlier collections, Judah compiled a new one in which universally accepted views were recorded
alongside those still in dispute, thereby largely reducing the margin for individual discretion in the interpretation of the law. Although his
action aroused opposition and some rabbis continued to invoke their own collections, the authority of his office and the obvious advantages
of a unified system of law soon outweighed centrifugal tendencies, and his Mishna attained quasi-canonical status, becoming known as “The
Mishna” or “Our Mishna.” Yet, for all its clarity and comprehensiveness, its phraseology was often obscure or too terse to satisfy all needs, and
a companion work known as the Tosefta (“Additions”), in which omitted traditions and explanatory notes were recorded, was compiled
shortly thereafter. Neither compilation elucidated the processes by which decisions had been elicited, and various authorities therefore set
about collecting the Midrashic discussions of their schools and recording them in the order of the verses of Scripture. During the 3rd and 4th
centuries, Midrashim on the Pentateuch were compiled and introduced as school texts.

Fundamentally legal in character, this literature regulated every aspect of life; the six divisions of the Mishna—on agriculture, festivals, family
life, civil law, sacrificial and dietary laws, and purity—encompass virtually every area of Jewish experience. Accordingly, the Mishna also
recorded the principal Pharisaic and rabbinic definitions and goals of the religious life. One tract, Pirqe Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”),
treated the meaning and posture of a life according to the Torah, while other passages made reference to the mystical studies into which only
the most advanced and religiously worthy were initiated—e.g., the activities of the Merkava, or divine “Chariot,” and the doctrines of
creation. The rabbinic program of a life dedicated to study and fulfillment of the will of God was thus a graded structure in which the canons
of morality and piety were attainable on various levels, from the popular and practical to the esoteric and metaphysical. Innumerable
sermons and homilies preserved in the Midrashic collections, liturgical compositions for daily and festival services, and mystical tracts
circulated among initiates all testify to the deep spirituality that informed Rabbinic Judaism.

The a”e of the amoraim: the making of the Talmuds (3rd–6th century)

Palestine (c. 220–c. 400)

The promulgation of the Mishna initiated the period of the (lecturers or interpreters), teachers who made the Mishna the basic text of legal
exegesis. The curriculum now centred on the elucidation of the text of the standard compilation, harmonization of its decisions with extra-
Mishnaic traditions recorded in other collections, and the application of its principles to new situations. Amoraic studies have been preserved
in two running commentaries on the Mishna, known as the Palestinian (or Jerusalem) Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, reflecting the
study and legislation of the academies of the two principal Jewish centres in the Roman and Persian empires. (Talmud is also the
comprehensive term for the whole collections, Palestinian and Babylonian, containing Mishna, commentaries, and other matter.)

The schools were the primary agencies through which the rabbinic way of life and literature was communicated to the masses. The types of
schools ranged from the primary school to the advanced “house of study” and more formal academy (yeshiva), the synagogue, and the
Jewish court. Primary schools had long been available in the villages and cities of Palestine, and tannaitic law made education of male
children a religious duty. Introduced at the age of five or six to Scripture, the student advanced at the age of 10 to Mishna and finally in
midadolescence to Talmud, or the processes of legal reasoning. Regular reading of Scripture in the synagogue on Mondays, Thursdays,
Sabbaths, and festivals, coupled with concurrent translations into the Aramaic vernacular and frequent sermons, provided for lifelong
instruction in the literature and the various teachings elicited from it. The amoraic emphasis on the moral and spiritual aims of Scripture and
its ritual is reflected in their Midrashic collections, which are predominantly homiletical rather than legal in character.

An amoraic sermon conceded that, of every 1,000 beginners in primary school, only one would be expected to continue as far as Talmud. In
the 4th century, however, there were enough advanced students to warrant academies in Lydda, Caesarea, Sepphoris, and Tiberias (in
Palestine), where leading scholars trained disciples for communal service as teachers and judges. In Caesarea—the principal port and seat of
the Roman administration of Palestine, where pagans, Christians, and Samaritans maintained renowned cultural institutions—the Jews too
established an academy that was singularly free of patriarchal control. The outstanding rabbinic scholar there, Abbahu (c. 279–320), wielded
great influence with the Roman authorities. Because he combined learning with personal wealth and political power, he attracted some of
the most gifted students of the day to the city. About 350 the studies and decisions of the authorities in Caesarea were compiled as a tract on
the civil law of the Mishna. Half a century later, the academy of Tiberias issued a similar collection on other tracts of the Mishna, and this
compilation, in conjunction with the Caesarean material, constituted the Palestinian Talmud.
Despite increasing tensions between some rabbinic circles and the patriarch, his office was the agency that provided a basic unity to the
Jews of the Roman Empire. Officially recognized as a Roman prefect, the patriarch at the same time sent representatives to Jewish
communities to inform them of the Jewish calendar and other decisions of general concern and to collect an annual tax of a half shekel, paid
by male Jews for his treasury. As titular head of the Jewish community of Palestine and as a vestigial heir of the Davidic monarchy, the
patriarch was a reminder of a glorious past and a symbol of hope for a brighter future. How enduring these hopes were may be seen from the
efforts to gain permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Although reconstruction of the Temple was authorized by the emperor Julian
(reigned 361–363), it came to naught because of a disastrous fire on the sacred site and the emperor’s subsequent death.

The adoption of Christianity as the religion of the empire had no direct effect on the religious freedom of the Jews. The ever-mounting
hostility between the two religions, however, resulted in severe curtailment of Jewish disciplinary rights over their coreligionists, interference
in the collection of patriarchal taxes, restriction of the right to build synagogues, and, finally, upon the death of the patriarch Gamaliel VI
about 425, the abolition of the patriarchate and the diversion of the Jewish tax to the imperial treasury. Mediterranean Jewry was now
fragmented into disjointed communities and synagogues. But the principles of the regulation of the Jewish calendar had been committed to
writing in approximately 359 by the patriarch Hillel II, and this, coupled with the widespread presence of rabbis, ensured the continuity of
Jewish adherence. Even the restrictions on synagogal worship and preaching imposed by the Eastern emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565)
apparently had no devastating effect. A new genre of liturgical poetry, combining ecstatic prayer with didactic motifs, developed in this
period of political decline and won acceptance in synagogues in Asia Minor as well as beyond the Euphrates.

Babylonia (200–650)

In the increasingly unfriendly climate of Christendom, Jews were consoled by the knowledge that in nearby Babylonia (then under Persian
rule) a vast population of Jews lived under a network of effective and autonomous Jewish institutions and officials. Steadily worsening
conditions in Palestine drew many Jews to Persian domains, where economic opportunities and the Jewish communal structure enabled
them to gain a better livelihood while living in accordance with their ancestral traditions. To regulate internal Jewish affairs and ensure the
steady flow of taxes, the Parthian, or Arsacid, rulers (247 BCE–224 CE) had appointed in approximately 100 CE an exilarch, or “head of the
[Jews in] exile”—who claimed more direct Davidic descent than the Palestinian patriarch—to rule over the Jews as a quasi-prince. About 220,
two Babylonian disciples of Judah ha-Nasi, Abba Arika (known as Rav) and Samuel bar Abba, began to propagate the Mishna and related
tannaitic literature as normative standards. As heads of the academies at Sura and Nehardea, respectively, Rav and Samuel cultivated a
native Babylonian rabbinate, which increasingly provided the manpower for local Jewish courts and other communal services. While the
usual tensions between temporal and religious arms frequently existed in Babylonia, the symbiosis of exilarchate and rabbinate endured
until the middle of the 11th century.

Paradoxically, Babylonian rabbinism derived its theological and political strength from its fundamentally unoriginal character. As a
transplant of Palestinian Judaism, it asserted its historical legitimacy to the Sāsānian dynasty (224–651), who protected Jewish practices
against interference from fanatical Magian priests, and to native Jewish officials, who argued for the validity of indigenous Babylonian
deviations from Palestinian norms. But ultimately the historical importance of this transplantation lay in Babylonia’s serving as the proving
ground for the adaptability of Palestinian Judaism to a Diaspora situation. Legal and theological adaptations generated by the new locale
and the needs of the times inevitably produced changes in the religious tradition. The laws of agriculture, purity, and sacrifices all of
necessity fell into disuse. The principles embodied in these laws, however, and the core of the legal and theological system—consisting of
faith in the revelation and election of Israel, the requirement that the individual live by the canons of Jewish civil and family law, and the
network of communal institutions modeled on those of Palestinian Judaism—remained intact, thereby ensuring a basic continuity and
uniformity among rabbinically oriented communities everywhere. Because historical circumstances made Babylonia the mediator of this
tradition to all Jewish communities in the High Middle Ages (9th–12th centuries), the Babylonian version of Jewish religion became
synonymous with normative Judaism and the measure of Judaic authenticity everywhere.

“The law of the [Gentile] government is binding”—the principle formulated by Samuel (died 254), head of the academy at Nehardea—
summarizes the essential novelty in rabbinic reorientation to life on foreign soil. Whereas Palestinian rabbis had complied with imperial
decrees of taxation as legitimate de facto—and this was all that Samuel had in mind—Babylonian teachers now rationalized governmental
authority in this respect as legitimate de jure, thus enjoining upon the Jews political quietism and submissiveness as part of their religious
doctrine. In all other areas of civil law, the Jews were instructed by their rabbis to file suit in Jewish courts and thus to conduct their
businesses as well as their family lives by rabbinic law.
While the rabbis could impose their discipline more effectively in matters of public law than in private religious practice, the density of the
Jewish population in many areas of Parthia (northeastern Iran) and Babylonia facilitated the application of moral and disciplinary pressures.
The most effective vehicle for the dissemination of their teachings was the academies, where judges and communal teachers were trained;
among these institutions, those of Sura and Pumbedita remained preeminent. Frequent public lectures in the synagogues of the academies
on Sabbaths and festivals were capped by public kalla (study-course) assemblies for alumni of the schools during the two months, Adar
(February–March) and Elul (August–September), when the lull in agricultural work freed many to attend semiannual refresher instruction.
These meetings were followed by regular popular lectures during the festival seasons that soon followed. Thus, while rabbis constituted a
distinct class within the community, their efforts were oriented toward making as much of the community as possible members of a learned
and religious elite. The harmonious relations that obtained with but few interruptions over the centuries between the Sāsānian rulers and
their Jewish subjects gave the Jewish population the air of a quasi-state, which the Jewish leadership frequently extolled as superior to the
Jewish community of Palestine.

The dissemination of the Palestinian Talmud probably stimulated the Babylonians to follow suit by collecting and arranging the records of
study and decisions of their own academies and courts. The Babylonian Talmud, which apparently underwent several stages of redaction (c.
500–650) on the basis of the proto-Talmuds—the early collections of commentaries on the Mishna used in the academies—accordingly
became the standard of reference for judicial precedent and theological doctrine for all of Babylonian Jewry and all those communities
under its influence. Some scholars have postulated a group of anonymous editors of these earlier materials, calling them stammaim
(“anonymous ones”). As had been the case with the Mishna, the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud was later designated by authorities as
marking the end of a period in Jewish history. The scholars who added the finishing stylistic touches, known as savoraʾim (“explicators”),
were classified as a transitional stage between the amoraim and the geonim.

The enduring vigour of Jewish faith during these centuries is graphically demonstrated by the missionary activity of Jews throughout the
ancient Middle East, especially in the Arabian Peninsula. Proud Jewish tribes living in close proximity to each other in the vicinity of Yathrib
(later Medina, Muhammad’s home city) engaged in agriculture and commerce and proclaimed the superiority of their monotheistic ethos
and eschatology. In Yemen (southwestern Arabia) the last of the Ḥimyarite rulers (reigned from c. 2nd century CE), Dhu Nuwas, proclaimed
himself a Jew and finally suffered defeat in approximately 525 as a consequence of Christian influence on the Abyssinian armies. Jewish
missionaries, however, continued to compete with Christian missionaries and thus helped to lay the groundwork for the birth of an
indigenous Arabic monotheism—Islam—that was to alter the course of world history.

The ”ge of the geonim (c. 640–1038)

Triumph of the Babylonian rabbinate

The lightning conquests in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula by the armies of Islam (7th–8th century) created a political
framework for the basically uniform (i.e., Babylonian) character of medieval Judaism. As a “people of the Book” (i.e., of the Bible), the Jews
were permitted by the Muslims to live under the same autonomous structure that had developed under Arsacid and Sāsānian rule. The heads
of the two principal academies were now formally recognized by the exilarch, and through him by the Muslim caliphs (the civil and religious
heads of the Muslim state), as the official arbiters of all questions of religious law and as the religious heads of all Jewish communities that
came under Muslim sway. Known as geonim (plural of gaon, “excellency”), they conducted high courts manned by scholars of graded ranks,
and they received financial support from Jewish communities assigned to them by the exilarch. Religious questions and contributions were
solicited from all Jewish communities, and these, along with formal gaonic replies (responsa), were regularly publicized at the semiannual
kalla convocations. Under the strong leadership of Yehudai, gaon of Sura (presided 760–763), the Babylonian rabbinate made vigorous efforts
to replace Palestinian usage wherever it was still in vogue—including the study of Palestinian amoraic legal literature—with Babylonian
practice and texts, thus making the Babylonian Talmud the unrivalled standard of Jewish norms. The campaign’s success is indicated by the
usage of the term Talmud, which, when unqualified, has ever since meant the Babylonian Talmud. Indeed, even in Palestine the Babylonian
corpus displaced its older rival and caused the study of Palestinian Talmudic literature to be confined to circles of legal specialists.

Anti-rabbinic reactions

The firm—and occasionally oppressive—tactics of exilarchs and geonim generated anti-rabbinic reactions in the form of sectarian and
messianic revolts, especially in outlying areas where enforcement was difficult. Inspired in part by ancient Palestinian sectarian doctrines
and in part by Muslim usage, the sects were by and large quickly and forcefully suppressed. In the 8th century, according to the traditional
Rabbinite account, Anan ben David, a disaffected member of the exilarchic family, founded a dissident group, the Ananites, later known as
the Karaites (Scripturalists). The exact relationship between the followers of Anan and the later Karaites, however, remains unclear. The term
itself first appeared in the 9th century, when various dissident groups coalesced and ultimately adopted Anan as their founder, though they
rejected several of his teachings. The new group advocated a threefold program of rejection of rabbinic law as a human fabrication and
therefore as an unwarranted, unauthoritative addition to Scripture; a return to Palestine to hasten the messianic redemption; and a
reexamination of Scripture to retrieve authentic law and doctrine. Under the leadership of Daniel al-Qumisi (c. 850?), a Karaite settlement
prospered in the Holy Land, from which it spread as far as northwestern Africa and Christian Spain. A barrage of Karaite treatises presenting
new views of scriptural exegesis stimulated renewed study of the Bible and the Hebrew language in Rabbinite circles as well. The most
momentous consequence of these new studies was the invention of several systems of vocalization for the text of the Hebrew Bible in
Babylonia and Tiberias in the 9th and 10th centuries. The annotation of the Masoretic (traditional, or authorized) text of the Bible with vocalic,
musical, and grammatical accents in the Tiberian schools of the 10th-century scholars Ben Naftali and Ben Asher fixed the Masoretic text
permanently and, through it, the morphology of the Hebrew language for Karaites as well as Rabbinites.

In the face of sectarian challenges, the geonim intensified their efforts against any deviation from Rabbinite norms. They began to issue
handbooks of Jewish law that set forth in concise and unequivocal terms the standards for correct practice. A number of these codes, notably
the Halakhot gedolot (“Great Laws”), Siddur Rav Amram Gaon (“The Prayer Book of Rav Amram Gaon”; on liturgical practice), and Sheʾeltot
(“Disquisitions”) by Aḥa of Shabḥa (c. 680–c. 752), attained authoritative status in local schools and further unified medieval Judaism.

The geonim, however, were powerless to halt several social developments in the 9th century that progressively undermined their hold even
on Rabbinite communities. A renaissance of Greek philosophy and sciences in Arabic translation, coupled with the progressive urbanization
of the upper classes of all religious and ethnic groups in the centres of political, commercial, and cultural activity, generated a new
intelligentsia that cut across religious and ethnic lines. Widespread skepticism concerning basic doctrines of faith such as creation,
revelation, and retribution was most poignantly represented by latitudinarianism (the tendency to be flexible and tolerant about deviations
from orthodox beliefs and doctrines) and by antinomian gnostic groups that denied divine providence and omniscience (see
antinomianism). Ḥiwi al-Balkhī, a 9th-century skeptical Jewish pamphleteer, scandalized the faithful by openly attacking the morality of
Scripture and by issuing for schools an expurgated edition of the Bible that omitted “offensive” material (e.g., alleged stories of God acting
dishonestly). A mystifying Hebrew tract titled Sefer yetzira (“Book of Creation”) posited in terse and enigmatic epigrams a novel theory of
creation that betrayed Neoplatonic influence. Karaites joined philosophically oriented intellectuals in heaping scorn on popular Rabbinite
customs that smacked of superstition and, above all, on Talmudic homilies that referred to God in anthropomorphic terms.

Gaonic difficulties were compounded by the rise in North Africa and Spain of populous and wealthy Jewish communities that, thanks to the
development of their own local schools and talent, ignored the Babylonian academies or favoured one over the other with religious queries
and, in consequence, with financial contributions. To the delight of dissidents and the chagrin of the faithful, competition between the
Babylonian academies turned to internecine hostility. Occasional revolts against exilarchic taxation and administration in outlying areas of
Persia had to be quelled with armed force. The Palestinian Rabbinites had revived their own academies, and their presidents now not only
appealed for support in other Diaspora lands but challenged the authority of the Babylonians to serve as final arbiters on matters of public
import, such as the regulation of the calendar. By 900 the Rabbinite community of Babylonia was in a state of chaos and dissolution.

The gaonate of Saʿadia ben Joseph

In a bold effort to restore discipline and respect for the gaonate, the exilarch David ben Zakkai (916/917–940) bypassed the families from
whom the geonim had traditionally been selected and in 928 appointed Saʿadia ben Joseph (882–942) to head the academy of Sura. Of
Egyptian birth, Saʿadia had gained wide acclaim for his scholarly retorts to Karaites, heretics, and Palestinian Rabbinites. Politically, Saʿadia’s
brief presidency was a fiasco and aggravated the chaos by a communal civil war. His gaonate, however, gave an official stamp to his many
works, which responded to the ideological challenges to Rabbinism by restating traditional Judaism in intellectually cogent terms. Saʿadia
thus became the pioneer of a Judeo-Arabic culture that would blossom fully in Andalusian Spain a century later. His translation of the Bible
into Arabic and his Arabic commentaries on Scripture made the rabbinic understanding of the Bible accessible to masses of Jews. His poetic
compositions for liturgical use provided the stimulus for the revival of Hebrew poetry. Above all, his rationalist commentary on the puzzling
Sefer yetzira and his brilliant treatise on philosophical theology, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, synthesized the Torah (understood as the
divine law in the Five Books of Moses together with the rabbinic understanding of this revelation) and “Greek wisdom” in accordance with
the dominant Muslim philosophical school of kalām. His efforts made Judaism philosophically respectable and the study of philosophy a
religiously acceptable pursuit.
Far from tightening the gaonic hold over the Jewish communities of the Arabic world, Saʿadia’s works actually provided the wherewithal for
ever-greater intellectual and religious self-sufficiency. While economic, political, and military upheavals progressively weakened various
institutions in the Middle East, concurrent prosperity and consolidation in the West stimulated the maturation of indigenous leadership in
Egypt, Al-Qayrawān (Kairouan; in present-day Tunisia), and Muslim Spain. To be sure, able geonim such as Sherira and his son Hai (939–1038)
exercised enormous influence over the Judeo-Arabic world through hundreds of legal responsa issued in the course of their successive terms
(968–1038) at Pumbedita. Circumstances beyond anyone’s control, however, were gradually undermining the effectiveness of exilarchate and
gaonate. But by 1038, the year of Hai’s death, the consequences of four centuries of gaonic activity had become indelible: the Babylonian
Talmud had become the agent of basic Jewish uniformity; the synthesis of philosophy and tradition had become the hallmark of the Jewish
intelligentsia; and the Hebrew classics of the past had become the texts of study in Jewish schools everywhere.